PLT Test Blog

In my previous posts on histamine, you would have read that I found that Claritin appeared to reduce autistic behaviours.   Once I had got to the bottom of what was going on, I found out that histamine has a long record of stimulating challenging behaviour in all children.   It also became clear that typical anti-histamines (H1 antagonists) are all slightly different and one may be effective in one person and ineffective in another.   Each one tends to have additional secondary effects. It now appears that the secondary effect of certain H1 antagonists may actually be more important than the primary intended effect of reducing itchy eyes and runny noses. There are three generations of H1 drugs.   The fastest working and most potent is still the first generation, the second generation are non-drowsy derivatives of the first generation.   The third generation are the active metabolite of the second generation.   As you will see in today’s central paper, the t...

Having recently discovered that an anti-histamine drug like Claritin can markedly reduce autistic behaviours, I have been looking into exactly why this might be and to see if there could be any other related interventions.   Here are t he results and they pull together all sorts of related comorbidities and in the end I seem to have found a better solution for managing summertime autism flare-ups. Allergies have long been linked to aggressive behaviours It seems to be well known among allergists, that children with allergies may exhibit challenging behaviours.   It goes beyond the simple fact that the child with an allergy will be irritable and therefore behave badly; the allergy itself is affecting the behaviour.   Allergies tend to worsen behaviour and the science can explain exactly why this happens.    This applied to pollen type allergies, food allergies and even asthma. In the case of asthma, I found several studies, one is called:   Prevale...

Today’s post is about a little experiment I carried out. If you have been following my blog, you will know that I have been looking into certain related diseases to autism (comorbidities).  One of the subjects that come up in asthma research is the role of a special kind of cell, called the mast cell.  One autism researcher in particular, Dr Theoharides, is also of the opinion that the mast cell plays a key role in autism. For today, I am not going to give you the full detail on mast cells, just to tell you that play a key role in inflammatory responses and that they can get over-activated and cause problems in various parts of your body. It is well established that you can calm down your overactive mast cells with histamine antagonists.  There are H1 antagonists like Claritin/Loratadine and H2 antagonists like Tagamet.  H1 antagonists are commonly used to control allergies, and H2 antagonists are commonly used for stomach ulcers and GERD. Claritin is off patent,...

One of the most read posts on this blog is the one about Lego Therapy.   We have lots of small Lego sets and they are indeed great as both tools and toys.   They are not exactly cheap, once you buy many of them. Monty, now aged 10 and with autism, is also a big fan of music therapy, which regularly shows up as a favourite therapy among parents, although it is hard to prove its value scientifically.   In fact the other day Monty went to his first grown up ballet.   He went to see Sleeping Beauty and sat transfixed throughout the performance and behaved impeccably during the interval, surrounded by all the grown-ups in the audience.   It is clear that music has a power of its own, particularly over certain children. Scooter therapy is my invention.   All you need is one of those new type of three wheeled scooters, which can be bought very cheaply. Now, in any ABA programme you will have to work on both fine motor and gross motor skills, so that means finely c...

This post is rather out of sequence, but it draws together several different topics that I have been investigating and introduces another chemical often mentioned in autism research, BH4.  The factor that links them all together is something called Endothelial Dysfunction. This blog has already established that oxidative stress and neuroinflammation are the key drivers behind autism.  It has not been clear whether the oxidative stress causes the inflammation, vice versa, or perhaps they are self perpetuating. In my ongoing investigation into the autism comorbidities of asthma and high cholesterol (proxy for cardiovascular disease), I have come across some tantalising fact, such as:- Asthma research shows that cigarette smoking gives you oxidative stress and this continues even after stopping smoking.  The oxidative stress reduces the effectiveness of asthma drugs. Oxidative stress is a key factor in cardiovascular disease. BH4 also known as Tetrahydrobiopterin , THB, trad...

A more recent post on this subject is here: http://epiphanyasd.blogspot.com/2014/08/nac-for-long-term-use-in-autism.html NAC (N-Acetyl Cysteine) is an anti-oxidant that is part of the autism therapy I have implemented.  I have now received feedback from other parents who are also surprised by the positive effect it has on their child with autism.  So far, it has had a positive impact in 100% of cases. In the literature, there are several schools of thought as to why NAC is effective.  As a free radical scavenger in its own right As a precursor to Glutathione (GSH) As a glutamate antagonist Reducing homocysteine Glutamate is one of the brain's two most important neurotransmitters, the other being GABA.  Glutamate is excitatory and so too much of it would cause you a problem.  NAC can act as an antagonist to glumate.  This is all very nicely explained by Emily Deans, a psychiatrist in Massachusetts who has a very interesting blog of her own. Glutath...